The Help -- Take 2

I finished The Help, which is a fairly long book, in record time for me. (This post is a long time coming.)  It helped that I had lots of hours of reading during the aforementioned Super Bowl and airport day.

To be fair, it wasn't just that I had lots of time.  The book was an engaging read.  I enjoyed my time with the characters and their complicated relationships and mutual affection or distaste for one another.  The characters are fleshed out (or at least as fleshed out as some of the more shallow characters can be) and fun to read about.

Given that the book is about the dynamic situation of southern white women and their black housekeepers in Mississippi in the 1960s, obviously race and racism are huge topics. Stockett did a fine job toeing the line between being too preachy and too condescending.  Even so, it's still falls somewhat into the chick lit category.  It's a book almost exclusively about women and the relationships they have with one another, growing together or growing apart.

I guess I expected more, although I probably shouldn't have.  With few exceptions, books that are on the bestseller list for as long as this one was usually don't have too much in the way of intellectual heft.